How do we measure a year? In daylight, in sunsets, in midnights, in cups of coffee. And in five hundred twentyfive thousand six hundred printed A4 papers less than what we consumed the year before.
As a WWF Green Office, we measure a year in change.
Green Office is a practical environmental management system for offices developed by WWF Finland. The power of Green Office is built by tangible targets and involving people in changing their consumer habits. In addition to committing to reduced paper consumption per employee at D&I, our own green goals culminate in lower energy consumption, recycling, waste sorting and sustainability in office equipment.
Being a WWF is a team-effort, including awareness-increasing luncheons and workshops with debates on, e.g., food and food-related choices we make on a daily basis. Our whole team from millennials to partners has shown commitment to the cause through competing against each other in bicycling to the office, turning off the lights and in sorting out banana peels. As a Green Office we report our chosen key indicators to WWF to see how we’re progressing, where we need to readjust and also, to show through performance that we’re actually doing what we said we would do.
Our whole team from millennials to partners has shown commitment to the cause.
But why are we doing all this? To join the choir of companies treating climate change as a corporate social responsibility (CSR) issue? Absolutely. We like to see ourselves as forerunners in Finland in making ethics and CSR inescapable considerations in all our advisory work. However, CSR is not the full story.
Our mission is to build better society and make our clients succeed, not only in today’s economy but in decades to come.
Green is the new black, they say. In March 2016 JPMorgan Chase, one of the world’s biggest banks, announced it will stop direct financing of all new coal mines and new coal power plants in rich countries in the wake of the Paris Climate Agreement of December 2015. It has been predicted that the Paris Climate Agreement has fundamentally altered the way businesses think about the financial risks of climate change, and that those who choose to stand still with a short-term utilitarian economic logic will not prevail. Put in another way: no matter how much environmental awareness increases, it’s the actions that count.
No matter how much environmental awareness increases, it’s the actions that count.
Besides the usage of paper, I have the habit of counting trees. Looking look out of our common living room at the office, right across the Esplanadi park , I can see 31 trees of perfect green beneath the skyes of blue. I tell you, the view from the most beautiful office building in Helsinki is beautiful. In fact, in early June it is so beautiful that I rarely can resist the temptation of singing to myself.
I’ve found that “What a Wonderful World” is always a good idea. The song is a never-fail classic in my Spotify-list that I created for D&I’s own Spotify account (dittmarindrenius). While thinking about whether your firm could become a WWF Green Office, go ahead and enjoy “Thinking Green and Slow”.
See you at our Green Office.
*This is a re-written/edited excerpt of the column published originally in D&I Quarterly 2/2016.